He's been around the world, but the surfing star always returns home to his roots.

Rob Machado is a human boomerang. No matter how far across the globe his surfing career flings him, he keeps coming back to Cardiff, the spot where it all began for him. One gloomy afternoon in early May, Machado leads a meandering, nonlinear tour of his hometown from the front seat of his car. Along the way he recounts the reasons why he keeps coming back.

“I’ve been a lot of places. Australia is pretty cool. I lived in Bali for a while…it’s just a different lifestyle…That’s the thing that makes it so that I keep coming back; because I’m always leaving. My little fishbowl is Solana Beach to Leucadia…All the restaurants I need to eat at, all the people I know are in that little zone.”

As we head down the hill from his house, he glances at VG Donuts, then looks over his left shoulder towards the San Elijo campgrounds. “We camped at the campgrounds all summer...all the time. We were pretty hard-core. We would just go down there and post up. My friend’s mom was all-time. She would just rent the campgrounds as much as she possibly could…We would surf all day; she would go get doughnuts.”

We drive towards the house he grew up in, near Swami’s, where his parents still live. Machado remembers all of his friends kept their surfboards there before they could drive. “My place was where we all gathered after school,” he says with a laugh. “We had this group of dudes and we went down to the beach and hung out all afternoon…We always surfed Swami’s…I caught my very first wave between Pipes and Swami’s. My friend’s brother had a surfboard at the beach. I took it out, caught a wave and that was it. No more [boogie] boarding after that.”

He had a progression of favorite surf spots down the coast, based on available transportation. When Machado got his first car, a Nissan hatchback that his brother, Justin, drove before him, he and his friends began migrating south as far as Cardiff Reef. “I used to know it was $1.20 to walk over to Las Olas and get a bean and cheese burrito…I remember sometimes we would forget money…we’d borrow shoes from people and we’d go sit in the actual dinner area. They’d bring chips and salsa and we would…mow through it, then we’d just be like, ‘Yeah, can we get some more chips?’ And they’d be like, ‘You guys ready to order?’ And we’d be like, ‘Uh, no.’ Then we’d be like, ‘Uh, we have to go. We forgot our wallets.’”

Across the street from his childhood home is Scripps Memorial Hospital Encinitas, the site of Machado’s first, last and only job before becoming a professional surfer. His father, Jim, was in construction and was digging the foundation. He hired 16-year-old Rob to help. “I lasted not even until lunch. I was like, ‘I’m over it.’ He was like, ‘OK, you want to quit, walk home.’”
Soon we’re at San Dieguito Academy, formerly San Dieguito High School, where Machado graduated in 1992. He played soccer and was on the school surf team. He eventually had to choose between the two sports.

“I just remember that I just got to the point where I was over it. I just wanted to surf. I didn’t want to go to practice…My coach lived right by Swami’s. So I’m running down to the beach with my surfboard and he just drives by. [We made] full eye contact and he just knew that there was nothing he could do about it.”

By Machado’s senior year of high school, he was traveling to surf contests. “My mom was pretty adamant about me taking my college prep classes…I pretty much was ready to go to college. By the time I was a senior…I was already [going to] turn pro. I still finished high school, but my teachers were pretty cool because I was traveling a lot. I won my first contest in high school, a [world qualifying series.]” Later he revisits this topic: “When I was getting paid, like, 500 bucks a month…there wasn’t any pressure. Then I went from that to making almost like a hundred grand a year when I was 18…All of a sudden there’s all this pressure on yourself…I can’t just stay in Cardiff and surf Swami’s all day…They’re gonna expect [more] out of me.”

We continue east on Santa Fe Road and turn right, parking in the lot overlooking Ada Harris Elementary School, which Machado attended from fourth through sixth grade. His favorite teacher was Jack Michelle, who also taught Machado how to play guitar after school. “I saw him today!” Machado exclaims.
Ada Harris was also the site of Machado’s first kiss. “I made out here on this property…behind the kickball wall or something. Her name was Julie. She was my girlfriend; back then, your relationship existed only at school…at recess and lunch,” he says, laughing.

He takes us up the Nolbey Street hill and into an older neighborhood bordering the canyon. On the left sits a little bungalow, the first house in Cardiff that Machado and his family lived in after returning to the states from Australia, when he was 3. Machado gets sentimental about his friends from the neighborhood—Christian, Frankie, Chris and Jon—with whom he is still close. “Growing up, those are your best friends that you have for life.”

Machado’s happy memories of Cardiff motivated him to give back to the community that nurtured his amazing talent for surfing, music and art. His philanthropy started with the Rob Machado Surf Classic, which ran for 11 years and was supported by the Cardiff Chamber of Commerce. It grew too big for a small beach town, so, after a brief hiatus, it was restaged for younger kids only. A few years back he also started an annual golf tournament, the Rob Machado Golf Experience, at the Lomas Santa Fe Country Club. It’s a themed event where the participants dress in costumes. Machado’s manager, Justine Chiara, explains that the money raised at the first golf events went to whatever charity was on his heart, which included the music program at Cardiff schools.

Then Chiara and Machado observed other programs—such as One Percent for the Planet and Jack and Kim Johnson’s Kokua Foundation—that had an environmental focus. Together, they started the Rob Machado Foundation and partnered with the Cardif Educational Foundation to, as Machado says, “join our minds together and come up with…ways to improve the environmental side of education.”

They started small, by recycling lunch waste at both Cardiff and Ada Harris schools. Then Machado had an idea to begin an organic gardening program by installing several raised beds around the Cardiff campus, where kids can grow their own vegetables and herbs; the plan is to sell the produce to Rimel’s Rotisserie. The foundations also sponsored a water bottle program and Ocean Week. “It’s amazing what a little bit of money can do for these programs,” Machado says.

The Rob Machado Foundation is still in its beginning stages, relying on revenue from the golf tournament and private donors such as the Beauchamp Charities Fund. Machado’s goal is to help support all north county schools; he hopes that one day the foundation will mature into a national program for environmental education, art and music.

At the heart of environmentalism is the notion that you give back what you take out. Reverse that and you have the boomerang effect, or karma; you get back what you give out. Rob Machado is a perfect example of both.

If you’d like to help support the Rob Machado Foundation, participate in the Rob Machado Experience Golf Tournament, to be held Sept. 28 at the Lomas Santa Fe Country Club. The theme is “South of the Border,” and even if you show up just to see how Machado gets his famous head of hair under a sombrero, you won’t want to miss it. Contact Justine Chiara at justine.chiara@gmail.com.